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Seated in her office behind a door bearing signs reading, “Warning: I have flying monkeys and I’m not afraid to use them!” and “What happens over the rainbow stays over the rainbow,” C.J. Hirschfield, the executive director of children’s Fairyland in Oakland, smiled as the sounds of toddlers gleefully sliding down one of the park’s […]
It’s no secret that things started going sideways for the Democratic Party long before November 8. In 2009, the Democrats had a lock on both federal legislatures, with 257 seats in the House of Representatives and 57 in the Senate. Following the 2016 election, those numbers had plummeted to 194 House members and 48 senators. At […]
Few pollsters on either side of the political aisle really expected a Trump win on November 8th. And while pundits and prognosticators were somewhat less certain about the outcome of state races, many were surprised—or shocked—that Republicans held on to the Senate and the House and improved their standing in state governments. Republicans now claim […]
Not everyone would choose as feminist hero a beleaguered wife who goes through a test of fire to prove her purity. Sally Sutherland Goldman has convincingly argued just that in her essay for the catalogue of The Rama Epic: Hero, Heroine, Ally, Foe at San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum through January 15. “An abused wife […]
With the CDC admitting that last year’s flu shot was a considerable bust and other emerging research challenging the shot’s efficacy, some are questioning if they should even bother. As a spritely 20-something who feels like she’s made of steel and impervious to all disease, I planned to meet in person with Dr. John Swartzberg, […]
Democrats are still stumbling around in the smoldering rubble of the 2016 presidential election, struggling to identify just what went wrong for them. Several theories are vying for primacy: voting fraud (or at least, inaccurate ballot counting), the Democratic Party’s disconnect with white working class voters, Trump’s bonding with the same, Trump’s uncanny tapping of […]
When Donald Trump barnstormed through California during the recent presidential campaign, he declared that the California drought was a myth, a canard promulgated by conservationists to protect a “three-inch fish”—i.e., the endangered delta smelt. He huddled with San Joaquin Valley farmers, taking on their cause as his own, and declared we’d have plenty of water […]
Fifty years after its founding as a program of the Berkeley Adult School, the Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra (BCCO, for short) is going stronger than ever by remaining true to its two founding principles: amateurs only, and no auditions. Membership has zoomed from 20 people to 220, and there would be even more if […]
This week, Cal Performances presents Language of Dreams, a non-narrative multi-media production featuring jazz pianist Myra Melford and her musical ensemble, Snowy Egret. The production will feature video, narration and movement inspired by Genesis—the first book in the landmark trilogy Memory of Fire, written by Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano. Published in the mid-1980s, Memory of […]
Road rage is hardly an acceptable response to the travails of driving. It signals inadequate impulse control, perhaps even sociopathy. People can end up hurt, incarcerated, or worse. But how about road woe? Because it’s probably one reaction or the other: If the Bay Area’s freeways don’t make you rage, they’ll at least make you […]
What radio podcast has three words, one exclamation point, mines the game Trivial Pursuit for questions, and has been produced by three UC Berkeley alums and their pal for the past four years? It’s Good Job, Brain! But if you’re a trivia buff you probably already knew that. Cal grads Karen Chu, Dana Nelson, and Colin […]
In the afternoons, Dana Vollmer, 7-time Olympic medalist, takes her kid to the playground near their house in Danville. Sometimes people recognize them. But not usually. “It’s always the moms,” she says, who recognize her. Or more accurately recognize her and her 19-month-old son, Arlen, together. Swimmers don’t typically get spotted in public; they look […]
Olga Mack was 13 when she accompanied her political refugee parents as they touched down on American soil in San Francisco. She was in an alien world and didn’t speak the language. On the day she registered to attend Washington High School, she was overwhelmed by feelings of being out of place and without a […]
Over the last decade, UC Berkeley alum Julie Bloom hopped, pranced and jumped across the tumultuous and unstable journalism landscape—first covering dance and the arts before moving to more news and finally managing to land in her current position at the New York Times as an editor on the National Desk. She entered the field […]
Cal is an incubator for the politically engaged, and many students move on to careers in public policy. Some even run for office. In the latter case, though, they usually wait until they pick up their diplomas. Claire Chiara is an outlier. She’ll graduate in May 2017 with a political science/economics major, and she’s also […]
Scientists have long believed that the cortex, the outer layer of the brain, was responsible for figuring out the meaning in a sentence. But a new study out of UC Berkeley shows that the hippocampus, a brain structure long believed to act as a center for linking memories together, plays an active role in extracting […]
Stephen Shames arrived at our interview with a faded California Golden Bears cap in hand and a black power pin on his lapel. Apt accessories for the 1969 UC Berkeley grad who spent the years between 1967 and 1969 as the Black Panther Party’s most trusted photographer. The baseball cap was old, he explained, and […]
Recent demonstrations at Sather Gate by LGBTQIA+ students and students of color were covered with gleeful alacrity by the national press—largely because white students were seemingly prevented by the demonstrators from entering the campus. Right-leaning (and alt right) outlets denounced the actions with particular fervor, claiming they were neo-segregationist in intent and distressingly uncivil in […]
Even those of us who don’t reflexively shriek “Go Bears” every four or five minutes know that UC Berkeley is one of the finest universities on the planet. The proof is in the sheepskin; if a Cal degree isn’t always a fast track to an executive suite or academic renown, it at least constitutes a […]
